[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-shao-song":3,"chapter-shao-song-shao-song-chapter-175":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Shao Song",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1558341,2024,"Chapter 175: Crossing Mount Li in the Early Morning","shao-song-chapter-175",175,"\u003Cp>This time, Lu Haowen suddenly showed responsibility, leading to both sides suffering losses, which made Zhao Jiu reflect on many things.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He realized that it was still far too early to do whatever he wanted... and this bureaucratic group, which had ultimately played no decisive role in Nanyang and had thus become somewhat tiresome to him, was by no means his enemy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In a word, everyone still had to muddle through life together like this; they absolutely could not separate, or rather, separating would be useless... They were already like Adam and Eve, so what was the point of hurting each other?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In fact, the storm over the self-criticism edict at this court session, together with the previous storm over peace negotiations, could be seen entirely as mutual probing after both sides moved back from Nanyang to Dongjing, in an attempt to find a new positioning for each other:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The first round counted as Zhao Jiu's victory, so the authority of His Majesty the Emperor had undoubtedly grown by a large step;\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The second round, however, probed the bottom line. Faced with the serious issue of fundamental principles, both sides tested the waters briefly and then stopped at the appropriate point.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But that said, after this court session, both sides entered a cooling-off period, and things actually began to progress—one utterly absurd thing was that Yue Fei had directly succeeded in suppressing the rebellion, and his victory report arrived together with a letter from Consort Pan requesting to accompany the imperial entourage.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Bureau of Military Affairs dared not believe it!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The military rebellion in Jiangning in the southeast, which had caused severe political, military, and economic obstacles to the restoration of the Great Song, ended on the fifth day after Yue Fei's forces crossed the river.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And Yue Fei's military report was written with extreme sincerity and honesty:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On the day of crossing the river, they fought the enemy at Shibu Town on the riverbank east of Jiangning Prefecture city and won; the next day, they fought a great battle at Jiangshan (which is Zhongshan) and won again; after a day of rest, they attacked Jiangning by night and captured it; the following day, the headquarters commander Zhang Xian pursued the enemy to Niutou Mountain southwest of the city, captured the rebel leader Wang Yi, and counted over ten thousand surrendered rebels.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Regarding this battle report, the Bureau of Military Affairs once expressed cautious skepticism.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The reason for their caution was that they also knew the combat effectiveness of the Jiangning rebels could not be too strong. As long as they fought methodically and step by step, this rabble could not be a match for Yue Fei's elite Imperial Guard troops who had fought bloody battles with the Jin army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, the problem was: in the hundred-plus years since the founding of the Great Song, had there ever been a general or an army that fought so methodically, step by step, without any superfluous actions or additional conditions?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Di Qing?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even when Di Qing served as Commissioner of Military Affairs, he engaged in political opportunism! Wen Yanbo's words were certainly detestable, but in the original circumstances that triggered those inflammatory remarks, General Di was not entirely innocent either.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Han Shizhong?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That fellow had just forcibly conscripted troops in Huaixi, nearly causing a popular uprising.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So, didn't they need to linger a few more days in the prosperous southeast? Didn't they need the Empress Dowager in Yangzhou to issue some rewards? Didn't they need Lu Yihao to take office and coordinate allied forces and logistics?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Just like that—cross the river, fight, storm the city, pursue the enemy—and it was pacified?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not to mention the Bureau of Military Affairs, even Zhao Jiu, though he knew it must be true, found this battle report utterly absurd... Think of him, fleeing desolately through the night to Jingou, preferring the fall of the state to sparing a head, crossing the Huai River at night clutching a head—who had it easy? Hadn't he risked his life every time to show off?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The so-called knowing it was true yet still finding it utterly unreal—wasn't that a sense of absurdity?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not to mention, there was Qu Duan providing a stark contrast at the moment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And so, His Majesty the Emperor, in a rare moment of clarity and refreshment, issued an edict praising Yue Fei on one hand, and on the other, ordered Lu Yihao to quickly stabilize the southeast situation, handing over the supplies from Liangzhe and Fujian, which had been cut off by the recent turmoil, to Yue Fei's forces to escort to Dongjing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At the same time, while replying to allow Consort Pan Xianfei to enter the capital, he specially dispatched Censor-in-Chief Hu Yin as an imperial envoy to go west of the Pass to meet Yuwen Xuzhong and the generals west of the Pass—this was both a form of help from His Majesty to Hu Yin, hoping he would move past his inappropriate state after the self-criticism edict, and also to make a decisive judgment on the situation west of the Pass.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It must be known that not only was the southeast matter concluded, but a few days prior, Zhang Jun, who had been sent to garrison Bashu, had also delivered good news. According to him, the fiscal reforms implemented by Zhao Kai, which had been approved by the court earlier, had achieved miraculous results... Zhao Jiu could now slightly understand this reform. It roughly meant that although the Great Song court had a developed economy in the past, it emphasized control over the state-run economy, at least ensuring national monopoly over revenues from special sectors like tea, salt, alcohol, alum, copper, and iron. However, because control had to be ensured, the actual market demand in remote places like Bashu far exceeded the official quotas. Zhao Kai's reform, in the current extreme shortage of central funds, completely opened up the market to maximize fiscal revenue from these exclusive economic sectors.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As a result, the entire Bashu region gained nearly one million strings of cash in additional revenue from tea alone within a year (one string referred to a string of coins; due to copper prices, the actual exchange was far less than a thousand coins, and the amount was variable, but it better represented purchasing power).\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To put it bluntly, one million strings was negligible compared to the Great Song's total fiscal revenue of over one hundred million before the war, and it didn't seem like a large number compared to the current nearly ten million each in Bashu and the southeast. Moreover, the final benefits of Zhao Kai's fiscal reforms still needed time to complete the fiscal cycle...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the key thing was that, through Zhao Kai's reforms and Zhang Jun's unified pressure, the Bashu region, by encouraging tea merchants to engage in tea-horse trade, had exchanged for over ten thousand horses from the Hengduan Mountains and the northwestern Tibetan region in just the first year!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under these circumstances, not to mention the efficiency of transporting supplies after the Bashu fiscal situation had broadly improved... it would certainly be most efficient to use them directly west of the Pass... Even just the issue of transporting and distributing warhorses made resolving the messy situation west of the Pass extremely urgent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Hu Yin was no fool. Although he was a bit too straightforward, he was well aware that this westward journey was His Majesty's care for him and a serious matter of state. So, at dawn the day after receiving the decree, as soon as the city gates opened, he set off westward with his deputy Mo Qixie, plus three or five clerks from the Central Secretariat, a dozen or so regular attendants, and twenty soldiers assigned from the Imperial Guard Central Army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Traveling westward, the scenery in the first half was what one might commonly see.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What was called common was actually not common, but merely scenes Hu Yin and his party were used to seeing daily around Dongjing... nothing more than military farms, fortresses being built along the Yellow River, a bustling crowd of soldiers and their families, and a continuous stream of refugees from Hebei.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for the local people of Henan who had already moved south, and even the Hebei refugees who had moved south to the Central Plains in earlier years, they were unwilling to return to the front line to make a living.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, the first hundred or so li of the road were filled with the special atmosphere of military control and the specific desolation characteristic of the post-war period.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>These scenes were all too similar to Dongjing City, leaving Hu Yin and his party sighing with worry.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But this worry soon disappeared, because after crossing Sishui Pass and entering the territory of the Western Capital, Hu Mingzhong and the others fell completely silent—the Western Capital, Luoyang, had also suffered war and desolation, but unlike the area east of Sishui Pass, where desolation still retained traces of human activity and overall showed some signs of recovery, the desolation here had a terrifying, grayish atmosphere, one that offered no hope at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The former millennium-old ancient capital had, as early as the end of the Jingkang era and the beginning of the Jianyan era, following the fierce resistance of the Zhai brothers and other righteous armies in the Western Capital, drawn retaliatory burning and slaughter from the Jin army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The core prosperous area of the Great Song had been reduced to ashes early on.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Later, during the two major Jin invasions, the main forces passed through here on their advances and retreats, and several fierce large-scale battles erupted. It was even conceivable that if war broke out again in the future, the Western Capital, a key location that had lost its complete city defense system, would likely suffer large-scale military disaster again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Therefore, not only were the original fleeing residents of the Western Capital unwilling to return, but even the Hebei refugees bypassed this place. The local garrison troops were also focusing on building fortresses in the mountains around the Luoyang Plain to prepare for the future.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And the Luoyang Plain, once the center of the world, inevitably fell into an untimely state of deathly silence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Along the way, Hu Yin and his party saw that the fields had been abandoned for years, their boundaries mostly indistinguishable. The cities were empty, with hardly any signs of civilian life except for a few garrison troops. The pigs and sheep raised by the garrison troops went in and out of county schools and temples directly. When they arrived at Luoyang City itself, they saw that the former palaces and famous sites were completely decayed and ruined, without even pigs or sheep, only wild animals roaming the streets—it was utterly unlike the human world.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Shaken to the core, Hu Yin and his party still decided to go pay homage to the Eight Mausoleums of the Zhao Song dynasty, but were dissuaded by local veteran soldiers sent by Niu Gao, who had been instructed beforehand. The reason was that after the Jin invasion, following the superstitious thinking of the time, they had naturally plundered the Zhao clan's mausoleums. Furthermore, Lu Qing, who had painstakingly protected the imperial tombs, had repeatedly fought with his troops against Jin soldiers, bandits, and righteous armies attempting to rob the tombs around the Zhao imperial mausoleums. The place was littered with bones and had become a cursed ground.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And precisely because His Majesty and the central government had issued several clear decrees—during the previous battles, specifically ordering officers and men not to worry about the mausoleums, and after Heyin, instructing the Western Capital garrison to first focus on building their own fortress defenses and temporarily not bother cleaning up the mausoleums—the place had long become an eyesore and was temporarily sealed off by the Song army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not only did Hu Yin burst into tears upon hearing this, but even Mo Qixie was deeply shaken by this journey. Yet the two could only grit their teeth and hastily continue westward, as if fleeing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thanks to this escape-like pace of travel, by late April, Censor-in-Chief Hu Yin had crossed Tongguan, entered the area west of the Pass, and arrived in Chang'an to meet the other Grand Councilor, Yuwen Xuzhong.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But by this time, the situation had changed again, and Yuwen Xuzhong's attitude had become very clear:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Censor-in-Chief Hu need not go around investigating. Qu Duan has been arrogant for too long and is no longer usable! It's better to return to Dongjing and report back!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"What does Your Excellency Yuwen mean?\" Hu Mingzhong was dumbfounded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course he was dumbfounded; even Mo Qixie found it incredible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It must be known that the reason for the prolonged indecision west of the Pass was twofold: on one hand, the main force of the Jin Western Route Army facing them was extremely powerful, causing constant defeats and a deteriorating situation that made work impossible; on the other hand, since arriving west of the Pass, Yuwen Xuzhong had been emphasizing the need to delegate authority and be lenient towards frontline generals, which was quite at odds with the central court's desire to deal with Qu Duan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In other words, all along, Yuwen Xuzhong had been Qu Duan's actual protector.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Now, Hu Yin and his party, having traveled from the Western Capital and witnessed with their own eyes the war-torn desolation where \"even the abandoned ponds and towering trees seem weary of talk of war,\" increasingly felt that they should not fuss over the frontline generals' slight arrogance and disagreeable personalities, but should focus more on actual military effectiveness... In a word, as imperial envoys traveling along, Hu Mingzhong and his party's views were gradually changing; they were beginning to understand Yuwen Xuzhong's thinking.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Therefore, now that they had met, His Excellency Yuwen's sudden complete change of attitude left Hu Yin and the others puzzled.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"After this battle, Qu Duan took the opportunity to annex the troops of various units west of the Pass...\" In the Chang'an government office hall, the haggard-faced Yuwen Xuzhong tugged at his beard and sighed. \"That much is tolerable. He had been doing this since after last year's battle; it's just an old, bad habit in the military. In chaotic times, ambitions arise. Besides, this time he did report and send documents to me, and Wang Shu, the Grand Coordinator Wang, who has proper authority, has been in his camp since his defeat...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"If that's the case, it doesn't count as a violation of regulations,\" Mo Qixie, seated below, interjected cautiously. \"Could it be that there was a story of him privately pressuring Grand Coordinator Wang?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"If it were only that, it would be fine,\" Yuwen Xuzhong shook his head repeatedly. \"In fact, everyone in the court knows that I have always believed that the dynasty's policy of using civil officials to control military ones has indeed been excessive. In this time of national crisis, it is even more inappropriate, and we should indeed delegate authority to generals who understand warfare, while civil officials who don't understand warfare should take the initiative to stay in the rear... Wang Shu was defeated, and Qu Duan humiliated and pressured him a bit—at most, it shows that this man has a detestable character.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Then...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Just a few days ago, my staff member returned from Qu Duan's camp and told me one thing... Grand Coordinator Wang Shu seems to have been placed under house arrest by Qu Duan!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"What makes you say that?\" Hu Mingzhong pressed, unable to wait.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Because after my staff officer arrived at Qu Duan's camp in the capacity of my envoy, Qu Duan directly submitted a proposal—that Grand Coordinator Wang had disgraced the army and brought shame to the state, and that it would be better to kill him to atone to the realm.\" Yuwen Xuzhong's face was ashen.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"...\" Hu Yin was momentarily stunned into silence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"This isn't insubordination—this is treason!\" Mo Qixie was also startled, but immediately blurted out. \"How could a Regimental Commander and a Prefect ever kill a Grand Coordinator?\"\u003C\u002Fp>",2684,"2026-06-06T07:45:46.639Z",1,"Novelzhen Translator","a3a1b13cc0f61f08f88ca567b08d31d6ad6c2b865bbd9a1c39f9785c585f3545","shao-song-chapter-176","shao-song-chapter-174",489,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fshao-song-cover.jpg"]